The present invention relates to an image recording apparatus using a coloring photosensitive toner in the form of microcapsule encapsulating a photosensitive resin and a chromogenic material.
Heretofore, there has been known an image recording apparatus which uses a photosensitive toner and a developer toner for image recording. With such an apparatus, the image of the original document can be reproduced in a desired recording medium. For image recording, two kinds of toners are electrostatically deposited on a photosensitive drum and an imaging light is irradiated thereonto to form a latent image thereon. The latent image is developed and the resultant visible image is transferred onto the recording medium.
This apparatus is advantageous in that no substantial color slip is caused and thus a high quality color image can be reproduced in comparison with a conventional apparatus wherein three or four kinds of toner are used.
However, the above-described apparatus uses the photosensitive toner which is low in photo-sensitivity, and besides the same number of steps needs to be taken to reproduce the monochromatic image a the number of steps needed to reproduce the full-color images. Therefore, the same recording time is required for recording the monochromatic images as the time for recording the full-color image. Such a recording apparatus is inconvenient particularly when a number of monochromatic copies are to be made.